In the morning hours of a fertile spring that verged on summer the fields were a riot of red poppies, yellow sorrel, dusty-blue borage on the road to Camerina. It was easy to pick a bouquet of 50 different wildflowers. A Sunday ride on the Vespa with my father—speeding by remnants of walls made of irregular stones bound with mortar, a slight drizzle falling, warm wind in my hair. We stopped at a café for a glass of almond milk, took a stroll along the shore and found a bronze coin the sea had once concealed. I wouldn’t know the origin of that coin, wouldn’t know enough Sicilian history. I did what a child does—toss the coin back to the sea, make it skip like a rock, see how far it goes.

2,500 years of crossroads—warriors sailing with mighty armies acclaimed themselves Kings of Sicily only to be butchered by the next tyrant with a mightier army. Sicily and her people nicely damned and left in ruins. Such a rich and bloody legacy, a kid could find the coin of her ancestor still damp and wrapped in seaweed—the people’s sufferings, pity and pathos, as well as ageless rites, colors and celebrations. The coin I found, you understand, was before the excavations in the area of Punta Secca and Casuzze began in earnest, before the remains of a temple dedicated to Athena were revealed—now housed in The Archeological Museum of Camerina, or Camarina, or Kamarina or Kaukauna. The locals still can’t agree on what to call their village that changed names according to the language of the colonizer, never mind the Museum.

Mountain Air and Honey Fingers

Ragusa’s hilly countryside was dotted with cows, farmhouses and trees laden with fruit. We were leaving the hills and what my father called mountain air. He claimed that mountain air “opened” the appetite and might lesson the sickly pallor localized on my face. I breathed more mountain air than the goats but was still anemic. Today I know that condition as Thalassemia Minor, an inherited blood disorder. The ancient disease has everything to do with geographic location, history of malaria, wars, invasions, mass migrations, Greeks, Carthaginians, Vandals, Goths, Pisans, Moors, Normans and Spaniards. I’ll never need Ancestry.com, and the good news is my DNA has a survival advantage—flooded with so much malaria-laden-semen I’m immune to malaria.

Marisu`, my father calls me through the waves of time, Marisu`, we’re late but almost home. When we get around the corner from the house, we’ll walk. D’accordo? Don’t tell your mother our little secret. I went along with his lie. We ran out of fuel and had to walk the Vespa home. Sorry, Lina. The Benzinaio was closed. I nodded, for this was certainly true. No gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores were ever open during the sanctity of lunch hour followed by the necessary nap.

Lina, is lunch ready? We’re starving after being out so long in that fresh mountain air, isn’t that right, Marisu`? How persuasive my cunning father could be with his subliminal messages. I would eat a fair portion of whatever was being served, but never an animal’s liver. What other than liver could build iron rich blood? I saw the gravity, the deep lines furrowed on my parents’ foreheads. After our meal his voice would go down to a whisper: Lina, did you prepare the oil and the syringe? The oil and the syringe was the torture I had to endure twice a week—B-12 injections and cod liver oil to drink for the anemia. My mother chased me around the house for what seemed like hours or until I was exhausted and surrendered to the long needle in her hand. She pulled down my underpants. My father tenderly held my face between his hands. In a soft voice he asked if I remembered the white caper flowers we’d seen crawling along a wall that morning. Before I could picture caper flowers she had rubbed alcohol on my butt cheek and the syringe had done its job. As for the oil: he pinched my nose to lessen the smell. I swallowed a glassful and didn’t cry. I waited to suck on my mother’s fingers dipped in honey. Her honey fingers replaced the taste of liquid sardines. I have almost forgotten the nauseating fish burps and the burning, throbbing pain in the ass. But a woman like that, and a man like that, how could I live without them.

Marisa Frasca, has a BA from The New School’s Riggio Honors Program. In Jan. 2013, She received an MFA in poetry from Drew University. She serves on the Board of The Italian American Studies Association, and on the Board of The Italian American Writers Association. Her poems have appeared in 5AM, Adanna Journal, Philadelphia Poets, Feile Festa. VIA, Sweet Lemons 11, Arba Sicula, and other venues.